Publication Type: Internal PaperAbstract: This paper will outline the nineteenth-century intersection of two transnational revolutionary networks of the Atlantic world: the red Atlantic of exiled European revolutionaries and the black Atlantic of slave insurrectionists and their abolitionist allies. The paper will build on my previous research on the American New South and European empires and my current research on the global history of the American Civil War, using especially the personal papers of revolutionary exiles housed in the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam. It will consider the emergence of this red and black Atlantic in the transatlantic struggle against slavery and the transformation of this struggle into a fight against the colonial rule in Africa that expanded with the decline of the slave trade.

The 1848 revolutions offered many Americans a more militant approach to political change than the moral suasion that characterized much abolitionist politics. When the revolutions of 1848 failed, sending thousands of revolutionaries into exile, those who ended up in the United States encountered a slavery debate turning increasingly militant in the 1850s, in some part because of their own transatlantic influence.

These two groups developed a common critique of property as a form of oppression, far more sophisticated than facile equations of slavery and wage slavery. As abolitionists recognized in slavery a form of property that in its very nature entailed unfreedom, so too did red republicans recognize in capital another form of property that, in a different way, entailed unfreedom in its very nature. Emblematic of this synthesis is the epithet “black republican” given to the antislavery party in the United States by its enemies, suggesting a racial dimension to the subversion associated with “red republicans” in Europe.

The American Civil War, followed closely also by European revolutionaries, and the ensuing abolition of slavery, represented a victory of this red and black Atlantic. European imperialism can in turn be understood as a reactive assault on this emancipatory black and red Atlantic. The red and black anti-imperialism of W.E.B. Du Bois and others continued this struggle beyond its initial Atlantic geography. The paper will close with a brief discussion of this continued legacy of the red and black Atlantic.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished ManuscriptAbstract: In this paper I move beyond the familiar story of early political campaigns by social movements within Britain and the United States, to consider the troubled relationship between anti-slavery and colonial expansion. The main focal point here is Africa in the late nineteenth century, where European conquest brought millions of slaves under colonial jurisdiction. This crucial period is notably absent from many conventional narratives, which heavily concentrate upon Transatlantic slavery. On the one hand, we have the legal abolition of slavery, which is routinely acclaimed as a great moral victory. On the other, we have European colonialism, which can be plausibly described as a vast criminal enterprise, involving death, dominion and exploitation on a massive scale. What should we make of the close historical relationship between subjects that provoke such diametrically opposed reactions? In taking up these themes, I argue that official support for anti-slavery in the late nineteenth century generally had more to do with communal honour than common humanity, with the main point at issue being what (anti-)slavery was held to signify, or otherwise symbolize, about the distinctive virtues (or vices) of particular communities.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished ManuscriptAbstract: Presenter 4 discusses the archival problems associated with free black discourse of the early nineteenth century. Specifically, this presenter addresses how early free black communities struggled with the idea of claiming authorship of important anti-slavery texts. This presenter also discusses how such archival problems can invite the critic to consider the rhetorical (and not just historical) implications of unstable authorship in early anti-slavery texts.

Publication Type: Individual PaperReview Method: Peer ReviewedAbstract: From the 1830s to as late as the 1880s, British Emancipation was commemorated annually on August 1st in the Northern US. This paper will examine these commemorations of British Abolition in the struggle against slavery, and the role they played leading up to and during the American Civil War.

In the tumultuous mid-nineteenth century as slavery moved to the forefront of American politics, August 1st commemorations expanded into grand festive parades and speeches. In the charged political theater that would culminate in secession and Civil War, radical abolitionists used August 1st to compare the “shame” of their country to the “humanity and justice of Britons.” For free blacks it was a venue to voice grievances not only against slavery, but racial discrimination in the urban North, and to assert their humanity in Republican themes of liberty and manhood. August 1st became a commemoration that was malleable, reinterpreted to fit the American political landscape even as it existed as a transnational event.

August 1st commemorations in the 1840s through 1850s must be examined alongside this radicalized antislavery movement and the related political issues of the day—from the Fugitive Slave Act to the Dred Scott Decision—as celebrations became increasingly martial in performance and its speakers grew more forceful in their demands. With the outbreak of the Civil War, commemorating British Emancipation would take on even stronger radical tones, supporting and defining the Union effort as a struggle against slavery long before it received such national definition.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished ManuscriptAbstract: This paper examines how explicit appeals the sameness of mothers are juxtaposed with implicit markers of difference in the Liberty Bell, an anti-slavery gift book series. This rhetorical strategy created a point of identification for white mothers, but it also emphasized a paternalistic superiority that empowered women to act. I argue that motherhood is not only rhetorically constructed, but it also serves a political function by creating both the possibility for and limitation to action.